The Prank
Waiting. Jason hated waiting. Too bad there was no good way for him to pull this prank without the help of Dash. He heard some hurried wing flaps outside. Jason turned towards the front door. "Well speak of the devil..." The door burst open, revealing a disheveled and worried Dash. She turned and saw Jason, and visibly relaxed.
"Oh, man, I thought you'd ran off. I was looking all over for you."
"So how was the breakfast?"
"Meh, it wasn't that bad. Wasn't that interesting though. Twilight told me some more about the changeling that invaded town, whoever that was." She smiled at Jason. "Pretty amazing how much trouble you could cause in only a couple hours."
"It was nothing." Jason said, laughing.
"So look at this," he directed Dash over to the table with all of his supplies. "Check out this apple. I used some of my human skills to make it awesome. Hold on a sec." Jason pulled out the bottom of the apple, and set the timer for about a minute, quickly burying it back in the black powder. He replaced the bottom of the apple. "Now just wait. Actually, lets go outside with this." They moved onto the cloud yard, and Jason set down the apple near the edge of the cloud.
"What kind of crack pot plan do you have set up this time?" she inquired.
"Just wait another thirty seconds, and you'll find out."
"Why thirty seconds?"
"Well, it's on a timer, and when time runs out, that's when it does the cool stuff." The apple faintly ticked for a few more seconds before it began to ring.
"Why is it ringing? Is that---" Before she could finish, the apple exploded in a shower of apple juice and chunks. She looked at the space the apple used to occupy, looking dumbfounded. She looked to Jason, who was wearing a huge, goofy smile.
"So how was that?"
"Was that magic? I've never seen anything like that before!" She matched Jason's smile, holding out a hoof. Jason bumped his hoof into hers.
"It's just common science. Took me maybe twenty minutes to gather the necessary supplies."
"Well that's definitely a lot cooler than magic." She paused. "So why did you show this to me? I mean, an exploding apple is cool and all, but what's the point?"
"Oh, yeah, well I may have told the CMC yesterday that I wanted twenty four hours to play a prank on Cherilee, and I know how much you like pranks, so I figured I'd fulfill my promise."
"But don't you think that that would be a stupid thing to do? Wouldn't it reveal your disguise, considering you weren't, well, YOU yesterday?"
"I doubt it, the only people that knew are the CMC themselves, possibly Cherilee and Twilight, because I'm assuming she probably looked into what happened. Anyway, they would probably assume that it was your idea, given the fact that you prank people all the time. And anyway, how funny would it be to have an apple explode in Cherilee's face?"
She chuckled. "I guess that would be pretty funny..." She thought for a second. "You know what, fine, let's go before I change my mind."
"Let me go make another 'apple'." Jason retreated back inside the house, and sat down at his 'work table'.
"You better show me how to make these..."
"Fine, whatever." He picked up an apple, and cut out the bottom, hollowing it out. "First, you make space for the explosives to go," He grabbed a small bag of gunpowder, pouring it in. "Then you basically fill it up with said explosives,"
"How do you make those?"
"Maybe I'll tell you later, I really don't want the secret to possible new weapons to be released into this peaceful place. Most wars on my planet were built on weapons derived from this." She sighed. "Hey, I didn't say I'd never tell you." She seemed to perk back up.
"You better tell me soon." She punched him in the shoulder. "I wanna be able to do stuff like that also."
"Sure, don't worry. Anyways, then you place the timer in, and fray the wires to start the rest of this on fire when the timer goes off. Simple" He held up the finished explosive device, smiling mischievously.
"Simple? That's one of the most complicated devices I've ever seen!"
"Really? The most complicated? Do you have calculators?"
"Oh! they just made one of those. It's still experimental though."
"Well imagine a few million of those combined, and you have the same computing power as one of our least advanced computers."
"How does that even work?"
"Honestly? I don't really know completely, but basically stuff just got progressively smaller. It's not like we have magic or anything to make up for it either, so technology is pretty much our only option of advance."
"Wait, you don't have magic?"
"No... I thought I told you this already."
"Wow, I can't believe life without magic."
"It's pretty much the same as me being away from technology. That's like my kind's magic." They both stopped talking. Jason decided to break the silence. "Alright, anyway, we're ready to go. Should be around recess, doncha think, Dash?"
She shook herself out of her thoughts. "Maybe, so lets get going," she said impatiently. She was really looking forward to this prank. It was something so new, so original, no one would expect it. Jason grabbed the apple, and they hurried out the door excitedly.
The flight to the schoolyard was uneventful, besides a few complaints from Dash that they were flying too slow, because Jason didn't want to hurt himself. Eventually, they touched down, just outside of the school limits. Jason put the apple under his wing, and walked towards the frolicking schoolchildren, with Dash close in tow.
"Looks like we got here just in time." Observed Jason. Dash nodded.
"So how are we going to do this? It's not like we can just walk in there and give her a ticking apple."
"We'll give it to one of the CMC. They would probably do what you want, especially Scootaloo. She can sick it on Cherilee's desk, and that's that." Jason looked around for the CMC, and eventually saw them, in a group under a tree. "There they are. Let's go." He handed her the apple. "It would be too strange for me to hand them the apple, so you'll have to introduce this as a prank that I helped you with."
"Alright, shouldn't be too hard." Scootaloo looked up and saw Dash, and Scootaloo's face lit up. She ran over, her confused friends in tow.
"Hi Rainbow Dash!" She exclaimed excitedly.
"Hey squirt." She noticed that Scootaloo's gaze had shifted to Jason. "This is my friend, Alternis, from Manehattan. He's staying in Ponyville for a while."
Scoots gasped. "Is he as awesome as you, Dash?"
Dash laughed. "No one's as awesome as me!"
"Thanks." Jason said dryly.
"He's pretty cool though." Jason elbowed Dash in the side, and made a whirling motion with his hoof. "Oh yeah, he and I have this apple, and I need one of you to give it to Mrs. Cherilee."
"But why do ya want us ta do that?" Applebloom asked.
"Oh you'll see, you'll see in..." She conferred with Jason for a second before turning back. "Ten minutes." They both started chuckling.
"I'll do it I guess," Scootaloo sighed and took the apple. "This better be awesome."
"Oh don't worry squirt, it'll be like nothing you've ever seen before." They had another round of chuckles. The school bell rang, and Dash shooed the CMC back to their class.
"We really need somewhere to watch."
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Scootaloo entered the classroom with the apple, and immediately set it on Cherilee's desk before she walked back in. More children filed in and sat down, and Cherilee got back to teaching the class.
"Okay class," she started, "we're going to pick up where we left off by practicing our multiplication tables." A collective groan was heard from the sea of desks. "Oh come on children, it's really not that bad, you'll have to use these all the time."
Seven minutes of bored students later, Cherilee decided that she had tortured, erm, taught her students enough about math, and moved onto english. "Alright students, now pull out a pencil and some paper, because it's free writing time!" Another groan was heard. "I'm going to put your prompt up on the board and you can start writing." she wrote, If you could go anywhere, where would you go and why?. "When you're finished, turn in your papers on my desk." She sat down, and started grading some math tests. She noticed the apple that was on her desk, and smiled. Then she frowned. The apple was ticking. She picked it up, balancing it on one of her hooves, listening intently. 'I must be going insane,' she thought, 'here I am, thinking apples can tick. It's probably just the clock.' She looked up. The clock was broken. She looked back at the apple, staring.
"BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGG"
The apple exploded, completely covering her face, and in general, the whole corner of the room. The room burst into laughter at Cherilee's expense. She angrily looked around for the culprit, before she saw two pegasi, Rainbow Dash and some other one she had never seen before. With Rainbow's track record though, she could assume that it was her that had initiated the prank, though she had never seen her pull something so complicated before. That must be the other one's doing. She started laughing. It was a pretty good prank, in retrospect.
The laughing lasted several minutes, and the least Scootaloo could say was that she was impressed. She had never seen anything like this. 'Wait,' she thought 'The changeling said that he was going to prank Cherilee in less than twenty four hours, and with something we'd never heard of.' She looked out the window at the two pegasi, who were still laughing and rolling on the ground. "Oh no. He tricked her. There's just too much in common' Her eyes narrowed. "No one tricks my idol," she said under her breath.
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"Wow that was great!" Dash exclaimed. "Did you see the look on her face?"
"Ha, ha yeah, that was better than I expected." Jason replied. His stomach grumbled. Dash laughed.
"Lets head back to my place and get some food. You better keep up this time."
"We'll see."
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A few hours later...
The School bell rang. Cherilee spoke up.
"Okay children, don't forget to do your homework, have a nice day." She had successfully managed to clean most of the apple off of the surrounding classroom, luckily enough for her.
Scootaloo got up from her chair, a stony look on her face. She gravely walked out the door, before Applebloom and Sweetie Belle. "Hey Scootaloo, weren't we going to go crusading today?" Sweetie yelled after her.
"Maybe tomorrow, Sweetie, something's come up."
"Well, okay then, tomorrow for sure."
"Okay, Sweetie."
She made a beeline for the outskirts of town, situating herself under Dash's cloud house. Did she really want to do this? She wasn't so sure. The changelings in Canterlot were dangerous enough, and she didn't have a love wave to save her this time. But surely once he was revealed, he would be stopped by Dash, and everything would work out. She took another deep breath.
"Rainbow Dash!" she yelled upwards at Dash's house.
Notes:
So...this chapter was short. Sorry. Like I said last chapter, I don't really have all that much time to do this, so that's why the chapters tend to be short. For the record, I WAS going to make this one longer, but ran out of time to do so. I also said last chapter that there might be a gap in chapters this week, where I may miss a day. This will probably be on Tuesday the 12th if I do end up not being able to update. Thanks for sticking with the story, short chapters and all.